Research Catalog

Title

The ancient lives of Virgil : literary and historical studies / edited by Anton Powell and Philip Hardie.

Publication

• Swansea : The Classical Press of Wales, 2017.
• London : Distributor, I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd.
• ©2017

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

• Powell, Anton
• Hardie, Philip R.

Description

xiii, 210 pages; 24 cm

Summary

The Ancient Lives of the poet Virgil, written in prose (and sometimes in verse), have long enjoyed great, though controversial, influence. Modern critics have often been scornful of these Lives, for trying to construct biography of the poet from allegorical reading of his verse. Yet some elements of the Lives are trusted, and quietly adopted as canonical, most notably the dating of Virgil's death. Some vignettes in the Lives have been cherished for their image of an emotive poet, as when Virgil, by evoking in verse the premature death of Augustus' nephew Marcellus, caused the young man's bereaved mother to faint. Less romantic detail from the Lives, as of Virgil's privileged material circumstances at the heart of the Augustan regime, has been less regarded. The present volume, from a distinguished international team, aims to revalue the Ancient Lives of Virgil from a variety of angles and in a variety of scholarly genres. The allegory within the Lives is here studied for its own sake, and shown to be part of a developed Graeco-Roman school of interpretation. The literary character of the verse Life attributed to Phocas is respectfully analysed. Certain political references within the best-known prose Life, the Suetonian-Donatan', are shown to be apparently independent of allegory, and to be worth prospecting for new information on the poet's personal history. And ideas of Virgil received and developed with brio in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance are here traced back to the Ancient Lives of the poet composed in Antiquity.

Subjects

• Authors, Latin > Biography > History and criticism
• Virgil

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Between biography and commentary: the ancient horizon of expectation of VSD / Irene Peirano Garrison -- Fashioning the poet: biography, pseudepigraphy and textual criticism / Andrew Laird -- Biography and Virgil's epitaph / Ahuvia Kahane -- The Vitae Phocae: literary context and texture / Stephen Harrison -- Larger than life: the elevation of Virgil in Phocas' Vita Vergiliana / Scott McGill -- Cameo roles: Virgil in Ovidian biography / Nora Goldschmidt -- The Vita Donati in the Middle Ages / Fabio Stok -- The historical truth of Vergil's recitation of the Georgics at Atella (VSD 27) / Hans Smolenaars -- Sinning against philology? Method and the Suetonian-Donatan Life of Virgil / Anton Powell.

Call Number

JFE 18-4368

ISBN

• 9781910589618
• 1910589616

OCLC

968775424

Title

The ancient lives of Virgil : literary and historical studies / edited by Anton Powell and Philip Hardie.

Publisher

Swansea : The Classical Press of Wales, 2017.

Distributor

London : Distributor, I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd.

Copyright Date

©2017

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Added Author

Powell, Anton, editor.

Hardie, Philip R., editor.

Research Call Number

JFE 18-4368